**sermon photo: Nasa

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on April 19, 2026

[sermon begins after Bible reading]

Luke 24:13-35 Now on that same day two [disciples] were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴ and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵ While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶ but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷ And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸ Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” ¹⁹ He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰ and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹ But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²² Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³ and when they did not find his body there they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴ Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.” ²⁵ Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶ Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
²⁸ As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹ But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. ³² They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” ³³ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴ They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵ Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

[sermon begins]

The first assignment in my 9^th grade drama class was choosing and memorizing a monologue to read in an accent different than my own. Thus was Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” earnestly butchered in a British accent by yours truly.[1] Sparing you the torment of a reenactment, Frost’s poem observes the chosen road from the rearview of looking back on it. It’s a very human thing to do. We make sense of our life by looking back, interpreting events and then reinterpreting them, wringing meaning from our experiences as we wrestle with them.

Our faith stories are similar. Those of us who’ve lived long enough can look back and see how God wastes nothing from our lives. Each wild misadventure. Each painful doubt. Each transcendent hymn. Each miserable failure. Each shining celebration. Each shattering grief. Each quiet joy. Each deep regret. Each sin forgiven. Each normal everyday moment. All those seems-like-yesterday moments spun by God through baptismal water into the cross-and-resurrection Easter faith we live today.

For Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus, yesterday couldn’t come soon enough to start making sense of all they’d seen and heard and felt in Jerusalem. They had a seven-mile walk ahead of them. Just that morning the women disciples had come racing from the tomb to tell them that Jesus was alive. While the two friends walked and talked, the freshly resurrected Jesus joined them. They didn’t know it was Jesus and regaled him with their story. “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” He preached way, way back about himself through Moses and the prophets before his earthly yesterdays, stories winding through time that made Jesus himself.

It’s not lost on THIS preacher (pointing at myself) that his lengthy sermon did NOT open the two friends’ eyes to Jesus. The big reveal happened through the meal. “When [Jesus] was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” Ahhh, they ate and then the scriptures and preaching made sense. Hindsight. Looking back through a current experience to see something new on the road we traveled.

Making sense of things in the moment and seeing God’s activity in real time can be tough. Communing and talking with another Jesus follower, sharing our experiences through faith, can make all the difference in our faith. Very few people are good at figuring things out all by themselves in real time. Most of us need other people as we understand our experiences, allowing the roots of faith to deepen as our stories wind across time.

If you had told me back in the days when I was building my nursing career, acquiring degrees, and having babies that I’d become a pastor, I would have laughed out loud, shaking my head at the lunacy. Looking back though, I see the threads of being baptized as an infant and having First Communion in the Catholic Church; being baptized again by immersion at the age of 12 in my stepfather’s fundamentalist reformed tradition; leaving church altogether as a religiously exhausted college student; and then marrying a Lutheran and baptizing our babies by the grace of God. Those roads made little sense at the time.

But God wastes nothing. Those stories now weave together by the power of the Holy Spirit. Telling those stories reveal imperfect and unlikely roots of faith in Jesus. Each one of you has your own story through which faith has played its part, perhaps along with some doubt shaking things up and keeping faith real. Faith and doubt are partners in the mystery of faith.

We have plenty of mysteries of faith starting with the mystery of creation itself. Earth Day, celebrated civically on Wednesday this week across 190 countries, is but a piece of this cosmic Christian mystery. The Nicene Creed that we’ll say together a little later in worship attributes creation first to “one God…maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”

We’ve seen some wondrous glimpses of the unseen most recently through the eyes of the Artemis II astronauts looking out the windows of their spacecraft Integrity. We saw a bright feature where the near side of the moon meets the far side. They officially named this bright feature for Commander Weisman’s wife Carroll who recently died of cancer.[2] The crew cried together as they grieved and celebrated with their Commander. And some of us also celebrated God, maker of heaven and earth, for the sheer magnitude of the cosmos through which our earthly home spins.

The Nicene Creed goes on to acknowledges “one Lord, Jesus Christ…through him all things were made.” A second attribution of creation through the words of John’s Gospel: ¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴ in him was life…[3]

Lastly, the Nicene Creed acknowledges “the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life…and the life of the world to come.” Each of the three articles of the creed revels in the mystery of life and creation through the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creation is announced; life is formed and given. Looking back through the millennia reveals what we can see of the road taken by God whom we profess as three-in-one and one-in-three, the holy, blessed Trinity.

As creatures set within creation, we can also look back and around now to see the impact of our interactions with creation. Producing life giving energy means negotiating the unintended consequences of mining, oil extraction, and use of their gifts. Consequences that negatively impact air, water, quality of life, worker safety, and peaceful coexistence without wars over energy sources. It’s well-documented that our creaturely lives are changed for the better when energy becomes available and affordable. Communities thrive when energy production is introduced and when we address energy as a systems issue not an individual failure.[4]

We are creatures who are simultaneously saint and sinner through the cross of Christ. The cross is our foundation for truths that are good, bad, and ugly. Not one of us can claim perfection or omniscience when it comes to our motivations, actions, or their consequences. This is just as true of our collective energy production and use for both positive reasons and negative outcomes as it is of our individual and community relationships. Saint-and-sinner is more than a catch phrase. It’s a theological truth.

Regarding the church, we see and celebrate God’s history of salvation and our individual roads that converge here. However it is that we understand the mystery of ending up here together, we can look back and interpret events and experiences through which God has called us here. Like the two friends on the road to Emmaus, this congregation walks deeply in faith while each of our own individual faiths take turns wavering, deepening, doubting. Faith converges our roads into a shared path. It’s a cooperative and Christ-centered pilgrimage for we who “walk as yet by faith.”[5] Walking alongside each other as church. Challenging each other through our different perspectives. Praying for each other when we won’t or simply can’t pray for ourselves. Holding faith steady when we cannot dredge it up in ourselves.

As church together, we remind each other that the Holy Spirit daily and vigorously seals us by our baptism to the faith OF Jesus. Through no effort of our own, the Spirit draws us through the cross of Christ revealing our messy lives on various roads and the fragile faith from which not one thing is wasted by God. Alleluia and amen.

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[1] Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken in Complete Poems of Robert Frost 1949. (U.S.A. Robert Frost, 1949), 131. Also see his poem here: The Road Not Taken – poem by Robert Frost | PoetryVerse

[2] Artemis II proposes moon feature name “Carroll.” https://youtu.be/GAMkRJdu9j4?si=jdfZa4Y_wfG0PiHQ

[3] John 1:3

[4] Melanie Allen, Xavier de Souza Briggs, Robert J. “R.J.” McGrail, and Robert Puentes. “How local leaders and communities are leading the transition to clean energy.” Brookings Institute podcast on July 30, 2025. How local leaders and communities are leading the transition to clean energy | Brookings.

[5] “Burial of the Dead” in Occasional Services: A Companion to Lutheran Book of Worship – LBW Hymnal. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House and Philadelphia: Board of Publication, Lutheran Church in America, 1982), 121.